The little group dispersed, giggling, as Regina entered the room and seeking out Lesbia drew her chum away. She was fond of private and confidential chats, but this one had a special point to it. The Websters were going to spend Easter at their country cottage, and invited Lesbia to go with them.
"You were such a sport at Dolmadoc last summer. We all say we want you to come again," insisted Regina.
Lesbia, with a dutiful demur about deferring to Mrs. Patterson, jumped—nay clutched—at such a gorgeous chance. She had been in much alarm lest she should be sent to Tunbury again to take charge of Terry for the Easter holidays, or packed off to spend them with Aunt Newton, who wrote periodical letters suggesting that her great-niece might leave school and take the place of the depressed companion who had at last plucked up courage and gone to a more congenial post. Dolmadoc, with its fresh mountain breezes and glorious views, seemed the very spot to blow away school cobwebs and to lay up a store of fresh energy for the coming term. Every corner of it would be like an old friend.
So the Wednesday before Good Friday found Lesbia with the Webster family in a crowded train bound for North Wales, jammed tightly between two tourists, with her feet on a portmanteau and Una seated on her knee, but smiling through all discomforts as she caught the first glimpse of the grey hills from the carriage window.
Dolmadoc, in the early spring, was a different landscape from what it had been in its summer dress, and she had to make its acquaintance afresh. Very little foliage was yet out, but the bare woods held lovely tints of amber and purple and gold in their naked branches, and the moss carpet was greener than ever. Here and there primroses spangled the banks, and bushes of blackthorn—perhaps the most delicate and beautiful of all blossom—raised white stars against the flecked blue of the sky. The higher mountains were covered with snow, and the wind was keen and fresh. It was not possible to sit about in the garden, as they had done in August, but walks through the brisk air were a joy. They could tramp twice as far without fatigue. It was delightful to ramble round to all their old haunts, to revisit the waterfall, to climb to the top of Pentrevis, to scramble through the thick fir wood on the hill, or—in rubber boots—to go into the marshy meadows near the river. They had a special errand here, for the little wild daffodils grew in quantities on the low-lying fields and were greatly in request for Easter decorations. The whole of the Webster family, armed with baskets, went on an expedition to gather them. They passed, by permission, through a farmer's yard, then made a bee-line across several meadows, climbing fences and hurdles, till they reached a particular stretch where the stream flowed into the river. This favoured triangle was yellow with the daffodils, and although busy hands could pick and pick it seemed to make little difference to the wealth of bloom spread around. Lesbia loved the Lent lilies with their short trumpets and faint delicious fragrance, so redolent of the country. She revelled in all the spring flowers at dear Dolmadoc, the great crown imperial lilies, with the tears inside their dropping heads, the blue primroses in the cottage garden, the white violets under the wall, the purple aubretia coming out on the rockery, and the clumps of yellow cowslips that bordered the pathway. They seemed so much cleaner and fresher than the flowers in town gardens or parks, she liked to lay them against her cheek, and would sometimes go down on her knees just to be near them where they grew. Old half-forgotten fairy tales would come flooding back in the company of the flowers, and all her most pronounced Celtic instincts seemed to crowd to the top.
Lesbia had a chance of exercising her artistic faculties on Easter Saturday. The Websters always helped to decorate the church, and this year the vicar's daughter was away, so they had been asked to undertake pulpit, font, and lectern. They appointed their visitor chief authority, and worked under her directions. With so much beautiful material in the way of flowers, Lesbia thoroughly enjoyed herself, and evolved a pretty scheme of decoration. She outlined the pulpit with ivy and bunches of wild daffodils, tying large branches of blackthorn and catkin-covered hazel to the candle-brackets; the lectern had a background of green and a great sheaf of crown imperial lilies, while the base of the font was a garden of green moss, with primroses peeping through in little clumps.
Other members of the congregation had been busy putting flowers along the window ledges and twisting garlands of ivy round some of the pillars, till the church looked a fragrant mass of lovely blossom, dressed fitly for its great festival of Easter day.
"I'll come and make a sketch of it next week," thought Lesbia; "that little bit with the font and the open door and the view down the valley would be simply a picture, especially if I put Una sitting on the step with her lap full of primroses. I can feel just how it ought to look, if I can only paint it. The light and shade is exactly right in the afternoon. Oh dear! I wish I could spend my days in painting. I'd rather dab away at a canvas than do anything else in the world!"
The Websters were long-suffering towards Lesbia in allowing her leisure to sketch, and even in sitting as her models, but they rebelled against the devotion of more than a due portion of her time to painting. They were in the mood for walking, and nearly every day wanted to start off with picnic baskets and to eat their lunch somewhere on the hills. It was certainly better for Lesbia to take exercise than to sit sketching in such weather. She groused, but submitted to the inevitable, and enjoyed herself very much when once she had made the plunge and started forth. The Stripling, who was taller than ever, still favoured practical jokes, and was wont to wax argumentative if anybody disagreed with him. He had many wordy tussles with Regina, and even did a little brain-fencing with Lesbia. He liked to air some rather outrageous opinion and stick to it, as if he were conducting the opposition in a debating society. On one occasion Lesbia, halting by a cross-roads sign-post upon the moors, remarked casually what a mercy it was there were no highwaymen nowadays to pounce like hawks on unwary travellers. Derrick instantly bristled to the defensive.
"I don't know," he began aggressively. "I think there's a great deal to be said for highwaymen. It was a sporting way of getting a living. And it made travelling far more interesting than it is now. There was some fun in riding with your pistol cocked. Besides, it brought out people's courage. We're a soft lot nowadays when it isn't wartime. A man was a man in the eighteenth century. He knew how to take care of himself. I think some of those famous highwaymen were very fine fellows. They'd the spirit of the age in them. People's blood is as dull as ditch-water in the twentieth century."